


For The First Time

by skribblindaydreamer



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Gen, Warning: allusions to drug use and trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-22
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-22 21:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4851845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skribblindaydreamer/pseuds/skribblindaydreamer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An angsty oneshot for a friend [Gigglepud, check out her account] based on "For The First Time" by The Script. HideKane, AU where they run away from Japan together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For The First Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gigglepud](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gigglepud/gifts).



The rattle of the train is rhythmic and continuous as it thunders across the deserted terrain, occasionally passing a dilapidated building or a small rural town asleep in the night. Hide leans against the side of the carriage, the wind ruffling his hair and seeping in through their blankets. It certainly isn’t the first time Hide and Kaneki have gone freight-hopping to escape to somewhere new. Their flight from Japan to the faraway safety of America cost them nearly everything they had, but they had to get away from the collapsing ghoul society back home.  
Being only nineteen and barely able to take care of themselves, finding a place to stay was difficult, and landing a job was even harder. They keep moving from place to place, mostly to protect Kaneki and stay under the radar, but christ if it wasn’t hard on the both of them.   
Kaneki is lying on his side on the other end of the open train carriage, in a corner devoid of moonlight, wrapped in blankets and shaking like a leaf. Hide wants nothing more than to take his best friend in his arms and hold him close, whispering naive reassurances, but he knows better than to move to close to Kaneki as the boy is now.   
Finding food for a ghoul is difficult, and their last rations from their thievery at a hospital morgue has run out. Kaneki is beginning to starve, drinking gallons of cheap instant coffee in an attempt to quiet his hunger. Sometimes Hide wishes he were a ghoul too, just to help Kaneki.  
“Are you still awake?” Kaneki whispers above the whistle of the icy wind.  
“Yeah,” Hide replies, turning his head to watch the faint reflection of Kaneki’s snowy hair. “How are you feeling?” he asks, but he already knows the answer. Hungry.  
“I miss reading books,” Kaneki murmurs.   
“I know,” Hide says, and Kaneki can hear the apology in his voice.   
“Maybe I could write one,” Kaneki muses quietly. “You know, about us. Just in my head, though.”  
Hide smiles at the thought. “Maybe someday.”  
“Someday,” Kaneki repeats, sitting up and gazing out at the stars. “Sounds far away.”  
“Look, I think I see the Sagittarius constellation,” Hide points into the diamond-dusted sky. “That’s your zodiac sign. It’s so pretty.”  
Kaneki shudders. “It’s so cold and dark out there.”  
“The sun will rise…” Hide says dreamily. “Go to sleep now. I’ll wake you when we get there.”

+++++

After many long nights of sleeping in strange and foreign places, things start to look slightly better. Their tiny apartment is hardly stellar. It doesn’t have hot water and the electricity flickers on and off at random times. The only furniture on the cracked floorboards are mismatched items rescued from the sidewalk, and the surrounding rooms echo with the sounds of delirium, reeking with the smell of alcohol and desperation.  
But it is somewhere to call home. Which is a lot more than they’ve had in quite a while. Hide works as many jobs as he can get, leaving early in the morning and arriving home in the darkness of night, but even so, Kaneki always stays up to wait for him, always prepared with a hot drink and whatever human food he could get.   
Kaneki still isn’t ready to be reintegrated into human society, the wounds of trauma still fresh and deep in his psyche. He spends much of his time curled up and resting, waiting for his feelings to return from the numb void they had retreated into. He still refuses to sit in a chair, so Hide sits on the floor with him, handling him gently and carefully. He has terrible nightmares and screams frantically in the middle of the night, which many of the tenants in their building did. It wasn’t unusual. To Hide, the screams seemed like random numbers, until one night, before waking Kaneki and comforting him, he writes down the numbers on a piece of paper. Hide gets up early in the morning to go to his first job and checks the note. The numbers are counting down by sevens. He tears the paper into shreds and throws them away.  
Kaneki rises soon after Hide leaves. The sun is starting to rise. He drinks a cup of coffee, then checks the occupied apartments for stray corpses which crop up frequently in the area. He finds a body, overdosed on drugs. The skin is cold, but rigor mortis hasn’t set in yet. Kaneki drags it away quietly, retreating into a small corner in his apartment, and begins to eat.

+++++

Hide comes home early one night. Kaneki is startled by the noise of the door opening, but relaxes immediately once he sees the familiar face. Hide is smiling, even though his eyes are red and watery. He’s carrying a cardboard box in his arms.  
“I got fired again,” he says, voice slightly hoarse. “But I got you something.”  
Kaneki puts the box aside and flings his arms around Hide, holding him close and secure, as if he might disappear if Kaneki loosens his grip. “I’m sorry.”  
Hide leans against Kaneki, exhausted and burnt out. “I’m sorry too.”  
“Please don’t give up on me,” Kaneki whispers brokenly. “We’re going to be okay. We’re going to make it. It isn’t always going to be like this.”   
He strokes Hide’s blond hair, and soon the exhausted boy is asleep in his arms. Kaneki carries him delicately, laying him on the mattress and covering him with a warm blanket. Frustrated with himself and the mental block stopping him from leaving the apartment, Kaneki kneels on the floor, holding his head in hands. He stays like this for a while, not crying, just staring blankly through his scarred fingers at the splintered floorboards. Eventually, he picks himself up and goes to check what’s in the box Hide brought home.  
It’s a typewriter. 

+++++

Hide sits down next to Kaneki on the floor, inside the nest of paper and ink Kaneki’s has created. He watches his friend type for a while, listening to the erratic clicking noise of the ancient typewriter keys.   
Hide sighs. “We’re not going make rent this month.”  
Kaneki stops typing. The silence is deafening.   
“I’m so sorry,” Hide mumbles, hanging his head.   
Kaneki gets up without a word, moves to a seemingly random space in the apartment and pries up one of the damaged floorboards. There is a rustling sound, and he returns with a handful of crumpled bills. “Is this going to be enough?”  
Hide stares wide-eyed at the money. “Where did you get that?”  
“I sold some of my short stories and poetry to the local newspaper,” Kaneki answers, pressing the notes into Hide’s hand. “I was saving it to buy you something.”  
Hide stares into Kaneki’s dark, gentle eyes for several long seconds, before burying his head in Kaneki’s shoulder and starting to cry.

+++++

Life begins to crumble for them in a particularly unstable month in spring, when Hide becomes sick. Unable to afford a doctor, Kaneki does his best to make Hide better with what little resources they have. He spends every waking moment either tending to Hide or typing away deliriously, desperately trying to write something, anything, that might sell.   
At night he stays up, rocking back and forth, mind reeling for ideas. He begins to fear the worst when Hide developes a horrible, rattling cough. 

+++++

A few days before rent is due again, and they definitely couldn’t afford it this month, Hide runs a high fever, his breathing growing shallow and strained. Kaneki paces back and forth, trembling uncontrollably, nerves stretched hair-thin and singing with worry.  
The phone rings, the shrill cry causing him to jump. Hide doesn’t seem to notice.  
Kaneki answers the phone hesitantly. “Hello?”  
“Ken.” It’s his editor. “Are you sitting down?”  
Kaneki slides to the floor, panic flooding his mind. “Yes. What is it now?”  
“The rights for your novel _Tokyo Ghoul _went to Script Books for six hundred thousand dollars.”__  
Kaneki can’t breathe. “What…?”  
“According to contract, four hundred thousand of that is yours. Congratulations, kid.”  
Kaneki can feel the tears welling in his eyes. “I-I have to call you back.”  
He hangs up the phone, scoops Hide up into his arms, and despite all his fears and anxiety, he runs out of the apartment, and carries Hide thirty blocks to the nearest hospital.

__+++++_ _

___Hide spends a few days in hospital recuperating. When he wakes up, fully lucid for the first time, Kaneki tells him the good news._  
Hide stares, his eyes wide with disbelief. “You’re not lying, are you?”  
Kaneki smiles, shaking his head. “I’m an author now, Hide.”   
“Oh my god,” Hide holds a hand to his mouth, the IV tube still taped to it.  
They both cry, but they’re laughing as they do, and several nurses smile fondly at them as they pass by the room. When all’s said and done, Kaneki stays at the hospital overnight with Hide, whispering happy things together into the early hours of the morning. For the first time in a long, struggling, terrible time, they feel like carefree boys again. Even after all these years, they seem to be born anew in each other’s eyes, the life restored in their youthful faces. 


End file.
